The karaoke, that is. 

I've been practicing in the privacy of my own home (and car).  I've been singing Stevie (lots of songs), Bonnie Raitt's "Thing Called Love", The Pretenders' "Back on the Chain Gang", and yes, Heart's "Alone."  (the nerve!).  I also tried "These Boots Were Made For Walkin'" by Nancy Sinatra.  "I can fudge my way through that . . . " I reasoned.  No, I can't.  As long as the actual song is playing with the original voice being heard, I can get thru it.  But on my own with no other voices to protect me, it just can't happen.  I can't do this to the general public.  I'd never hear the end of it and they'd never recover.

Funny thing is - my Dad can sing.  My mother can NOT.  Sure wish I'd gotten his genes. 

Oh, well.  At least I can clog!!

Wow.  I guess it's been a while hasn't it?  I'm been lax in the blogging dept, but not in the clogging dept! 

The state convention was awesome.  Learned quite a few routines, one of which I added to our repertoire - "Nothing Better to Do".  It was taught by Jamie Conn of Clogging Connection.  I do enjoy his teaching . . .  very animated and inspirational.   We're now looking forward to the Jamboree in Tallahassee , hosted by Jeff Wood and the Mountain Dews.  Now that's another talented bunch!

As far as our group, we are moving right along.  Started teaching my newest piece "Better Life" by Keith Urban last week.  It's peppy and it will be a cool show piece.

This being the first workshop for the few of us who attended, it was quite an experience!  There were groups from all of over the state of FL.  There were lots of very talented people there, various skill levels (most of which were awesome!)  We felt like fish out of water; many of the 'requested' routines (songs that people just got up and did dance to) were those that seem to be quite well-known in the clogging community and are repeated in workshops.  In that regard, we did a lot of sitting, but once they played "Old Time Rock and Roll", we got up and showed our stuff!

Every hour, a new routine was taught.  Most were in the 'intermediate' category, with one in the late afternoon on Saturday being 'advanced'.  It didn't take long for 3 of us to take one look at that one and go back to our seats to watch!  But Tracy stuck it out a bit longer and started to catch on to some of the more complicated combinations.

The instructors were: Anne Lanier, Marge Callahan, Greg Dionne, Jeff Parrott, Jamie Conn, and Diana Allen.  My personal favorite was Anne Lanier.  She's energetic, talented, and loves to have a good time.  Marge Callahan has a wonderful sense of humor.  She cued her pieces, while her assistant demonstrated the steps.  Jeff Parrott is quite the animated character.  His routines were loads of fun.  Of course, all of the others were great, too. 

Saturday night, we were 9th out of 10 exhibition acts.  We held our own very nicely, considering this was our first performance in a room full of  'fellow cloggers'.  It was a blast.

We also met some people we know from our list of  MySpace friends,  including Cricket and his family, the Kountry Folk Kloggers, and Jeff Wood from the Mountain Dews.

We are looking forward to the annual FL Clogging Convention in Orlando later this month.  We won't exhibition this time, but we are excited to see how this compares to the Pow Wow.

Until next time . . .  !